Bloomberg & The Olympics: An Accidental Gold Medal

I'm on record as a big fan of New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, regardless of whether he's running for president. (My take: he's not, and thank goodness for that: he's a great mayor because he's a strong mayor. A far different position than the presidency. He also insists he won't run — but I expect him to throw his weight behind some big centrist/independent candidates in 2012, for the presidency and/or the Senate and/or governor.)

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But I've consistently differed with Mayor Mike on one issue: civic investment in sports venues.

He backed the building of the new Yankee Stadium, which cost New York taxpayers just shy of 1.2 billion dollars. He backed the Atlantic Yards project, which saw developer Bruce Ratner win a bid of $100 million on public land worth as much as $240 million, as well as gain eminent domain over large tracts of private property. And he strongly backed New York's bid for the 2012 Olympics.

The day we lost that bid to London was one of the happier ones I've experienced where city politics were the concern — to say nothing of basic human comfort. Simple maintenance of a manhole can thrust Gotham into gridlock. Building Olympic "villages," stadia, and other single-use cash pits would have shut this city down, as well as saddled it with debt it can't afford and would never have recouped.

Those happy inevitabilities went to London instead — London, perhaps the only major city hit harder than us by the global economic downturn. So I'm darkly amused to see Andrew Stuttaford's poston what else London gained by winning the 2012 games: a fat and costly load of luxury concessions to Olympic grandees and their oh-so-deserving families, and a disgusting abasement of free speech rights in deference to the corporate sponsors of "amateur" sport. Citius, altius, fortius, mates. I'll think of you as I board my mostly uncrowded train in my mostly solvent city two summers from now.

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